What to say about 2008, other than Good riddance? Vaporization of net worth threatened to translate into vaporization of self-worth; deregulation was too often outed as dereliction, and the magic of the marketplace became necromantic at best. Passing from a macroeconomic to a blog-specific perspective, with legacy-furtherers like Rusty Burke, [redacted], Greg Staples, Fabrice Tortey, and Grin of the TC Rifles acting on his behalf, Robert E. Howard lost no momentum in 2008, give or take an un-supreme moment here and a bitter tree there. Vampires, though, they arguably had an even worse year than investment bankers, as Stephenie Meyer’s fantasies, emo enough to require Sensodyne for their incisors, soulfully short-leashed themselves on the big screen (in the unlikely event that I’m appointed czar-in-charge-of-confiscatory-policy, my first move will be to introduce a punitive tax on typos-turned-vanity-spellings like “Stephenie” and “Britney”. Joe Abercrombie’s Last Argument of Kings, Richard Morgan’s The Steel Remains, and Matthew Woodring Stover’s Caine Black Knife reveled in takes on sword-and-sorcery so noir-ish and non-wish-fulfilling as to be best read through night-vision goggles.

2008 was also yet another year in which George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons remained unfinished and unpublished — perhaps I should create a new category, “No News and Non-Events,” for this post. The persistence of this oh-so-watched-pot in refusing to boil even came to the attention of The Onion:

Technically, fans have been waiting for the “fourth” book, A Dance With Dragons, since shortly after the third installment came out in 2000 — Martin spent five years working on it, then announced that it was too long, and his publishers were splitting it in two for publication. In 2005, he published half of it as A Feast For Crows. By that time, the series had built a sizeable, rabid fan base, and the book went straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. But readers still set the Internet afire, bitching about Feast‘s focus on minor and new characters, and the way it left the biggest fan-favorite characters and the key plotlines for what’s now supposedly going to be the fifth book. At the time, Martin said Dance was largely completed and would come out shortly, but three years later, he’s still writing it, and he’s become noticeably surly about questions regarding the book — and about the way his publishers keep optimistically announcing release dates even though the book still isn’t done.

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C’mon…you know you want to click.

In Surprised By Joy, C. S. Lewis recalled undergoing an epiphany upon reading the words “Balder the Beautiful/Is dead, is dead!” in one of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Norseified poems. “Uplifted into huge regions of northern sky, I desired with almost sickening intensity something never to be described (except that it is cold, spacious, severe, pale, and remote).” This morning Cimmerian Central has been similarly uplifted, thanks to Bookseller.com:

HarperCollins is to publish a new book by the late Lord of the Rings author J R R Tolkien. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, edited and introduced by Tolkien’s son Christopher, will be published in hardback in May 2009.

The previously unpublished work was written while Tolkien was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University during the 1920s and ’30s, before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The publication will make available for the first time Tolkien’s extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the Völsung and the Fall of the Niflungs.

Christopher Tolkien edited Tolkien’s most recent title The Children of Húrin in 2007.

Further details about the contents of the book will be revealed closer to publication.

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During the weapon’s dark nativity the clangor of coerced swordsmith-toil masked the muttering of murder-curses:

Sigrlami was the name of a king who ruled over Gardaríki; his daughter was Eyfura, most beautiful of all women. This king had obtained from dwarfs the sword called Tyrfing, the keenest of all blades; every time it was drawn a light shone from it like a ray of the sun. It could never be held unsheathed without being the death of a man, and it had always to be sheathed with blood still warm upon it. There was no living thing, neither man nor beast, that could live to see another day if it were wounded by Tyrfing, whether the wound were big or little; never had it failed in a stroke or been stayed before it plunged into the earth, and the man who bore it in battle would always be victorious, if blows were struck with it. This sword is renowned in all the ancient tales.

That’s the introduction of Tyrfing in Saga Heidreks Konungs ins Vitra, The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, translated, introduced, annotated, and backstopped with appendices by none other than Christopher Tolkien back in 1960, when he was a Lecturer in Old English at Oxford’s New College. Nor is this ominous glaive’s renown limited to ancient tales; let’s join Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword already in progress, as the eyeless, dragonskin-aproned Jötun-smith Bolverk is tasked to reforge “the banes of heroes,” which has been snapped in two by Thor himself:

Bolverk’s hands fumbled over the pieces. “Aye, ” he breathed,” Well I remember this blade. Me it was whose help Dyrin and Dvalin besought, when they must make such a sword as this to ransom themselves from Svafrlami but would also have it be their revenge on him. We forged ice and death and storm into it, mighty runes and spells, a living will to harm.” He grinned. “Many warriors have owned this sword, because it brings victory. Naught is there on which it does not bite, nor does it ever grow dull of edge. Venom is in the steel, and wounds it gives cannot be healed by leechcraft or magic or prayer. Yet this is the curse on it: that every time it is drawn it must drink blood, and in the end, somehow, it will be the bane of him who wields it.”

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Head over to Charles Saunders’ blog, where he’s posted a pair of interesting references to his work from the way-back machine, both of which show his tales and worldview putting cracks into the veneer of the previously homogeneous genre of subcreated African adventure. And word on the street has it that more Imaro is due to be released soon from Sword & Soul Media, so keep an eye out for that.

Even the Elect who revere The Worm Ouroboros may never have come across C. S. Lewis’ “A Tribute to E. R. Eddison.” Although this blurb-as-bullseye can be found in the On Stories and Other Essays on Literature collection, I’d like to quote the entire paragraph here, because Lewis makes every word count:

It is very rarely that a middle-aged man finds an author who gives him, what he knew so often in his teens and twenties, the sense of having opened a new door. One had thought those days were past. Eddison’s heroic romances disproved it. Here was a new literary species, a new rhetoric, a new climate of the imagination. Its effect is not evanescent, for the whole life and strength of a singularly massive and consistent personality lies behind it. Still less, however, is it mere self-expression, appealing only to those whose subjectivity resembles the author’s: admirers of Eddison differ in age and sex and include some (like myself) to whom his world is alien and even sinister. In a word, these books are works, first and foremost, of art. And they are irreplaceable. Nowhere else shall we meet this precise blend of hardness and luxury, of lawless speculation and sharply realised detail, of the cynical and the magnanimous. No author can be said to remind us of Eddison.

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If you recall, last April I wrote on this blog about Cyäegha, the new UK-based Lovecraft ‘zine edited by Cimmerian reader and Lion’s Den contributor Graeme Phillips. If you were a bit slow on the draw with Cyäegha #1, sorry — it’s now sold out. But issue #2 has been released, and you can check out the list of contents here. The reprinted pieces in this ish from Eyurid: A Lovecraftian Portfolio (Dunwich House, 1980) merit special mention, as that tome was only available in a 120-copy limited edition and has been out of print for years.

I should also mention that Cyäegha artist Toren Atkinson (that’s his work on the cover above) is the lead singer of The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, who will be performing live on Saturday December 6 at The Rio Theater in Vancouver BC. Visit www.cthulhupalooza.com for more information.

Howardists’ Howardist Charles Hoffman turns in an Amazonian review of The Collected Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. He’s none too affrighted by “Rattle of Bones” (for my part I don’t think “Delenda Est” is classifiable as a horror story unless one is on the payroll of the late-period Roman Empire) and sticks up for the excluded “The Hyena,” “Black Wind Blowing,” and especially “The People of the Black Coast.” I tried to push that story hard in a TC essay back in February, but it seems that “People” is a rare blind spot for His Editorial Excellency Rusty Burke; perhaps he’s simply dined too well on too many crabmeat dinners over the years to accept the crustaceans’ oversized and supersapient brethren as a credible threat.

Today is of course Black Friday for those of us who unswooningly prefer the gore-and-gravedirt-reeking, hemoglobin-slurping, food-chain-topping undead of yester-fiction, so it’s great to see Hoffman plugging The Collected Horror Stories at the expense of “contemporary horror…recently dominated by chicks’ overheated erotic fantasies about their imaginary vampire boyfriends.” I don’t think Del Rey did themselves any favors in terms of imprinting a strong visual identity for each REH collection this time, though. Here’s the Greg Staples tentacular spectacular that for months was the front runner for front cover:

Instead they went with this:

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Charles Saunders has posted some new material to his website of interest to fans of fantasy and historical fiction.

First, for the politically minded there’s Chuck’s detailed thoughts on the recent election, from the perspective of a black North American fantasist intimately engaged in furthering appreciation of African culture, legendry, history, and dealing with what he ominously calls “The Legacy.” Worth a read, if you are so inclined.

More on point for this blog is Saunders’ review of a new series of historical fiction, one that furthers the inroads that Saunders himself pioneered with his creation and defining of what’s come to be known as “Sword-and-Soul” fiction. Brother G (pen name for Gregory L. Walker) has taken Greek mythology, quest narratives, ancestral memories, and loads of original Afrocentric worldbuilding rooted in ancient history, and used them to create a rip-roaring adventure that at times literally spans the world. Sounds very promising, with what sounds like hearty helpings of Howardian-style storytelling in the mix. I’m looking forward to reading them. You can buy them yourself here:

Book 1: Shades of Memnon

Book 2: Ra Force Rising

Book 3: African Atlantis Unbound

Steve adds: I note from Charles’ review that Memnon’s adventures come to us via “the framing device of the ancestral memories of a contemporary African-American man in a coma after a serious accident.” At this late date Walker didn’t necessarily borrow the framing device from REH or Jack London, but it’s cool to see the technique being de-mothballed.

October is a month that doesn’t merely pluck at heart-strings, but scrapes a violinist’s bow across them. Sunlight like dwindling gold coins from a pursesnatcher’s best-ever score. Late afternoon lyricism, the year waning and the night gaining. Champagne-air with an ice water chaser. The last month of shirtsleeves and the first month of the schoolyear turned routine, after the adjustments to new classes and new teachers have been made. The Constitutional taffy-pull of the First Monday in October. The pine-tarry benison of still playing in October. The campaign bogeyman of the October Surprise. Robert Frost’s “October.” The demesne of our branch-denuding, Howard-evoking acquaintance, the sere and yellow leaf. Jack Skellington and Halloween Town. Pumpkin patches with nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see. Laurie Strode, still hours away from her babysitting gig, called on by her English teacher, de-abstractifying Fate as being “a natural element, like earth, air, fire, water.”

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